Aspects of the present invention relate to appliances and computers. Other aspects of the present invention relate to headless devices.
The use of a computer to perform a specific function is becoming more commonplace. Such a role of a computer is similar to the conventional role of an appliance. The boundary between an appliance and a computer is gradually blurring. The term “device” is now often used to refer to an appliance or a computer that performs a well-defined and specific function (as opposed to a generic function). In many ways, utilizing the concept of appliance can simplify a device and make it more manageable and more reliable.
More and more computers are being deployed headless. That is, they are manufactured and put in use without peripherals such as monitors, video cards, keyboards, mousses, floppy drives, and CD-ROM. Many headless computers have no means to input/output (I/O) and some have merely a network interface card. The lack of I/O capabilities causes some difficulty in configuring headless devices. For example, it is often inconvenient to even set up an initial configuration of an Internet Protocol (IP) address for a headless computer.
Currently, to configure a headless computer, it may require that the headless computer support some form of I/O, so that it can be connected to appropriate peripherals, through which configuration can be performed. Through such means, headless devices may be configured one at a time via the I/O peripherals. Such peripherals include a floppy drive, a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), a serial port, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) and others. A configuration process carried out via such peripherals is often tedious, inefficient, and difficult. In addition, current configuration processes force a headless device to support I/O peripherals that may be used only once for initial configuration and then not needed during the service life of the headless device.